


Descent into Hell

by faerywhimsy (persephone20)



Series: A History of Addiction [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drug Use, Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective, Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, M/M, Mary in Sherlock's mind palace, Mind Palace, Missing Scene, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:11:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9432098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/faerywhimsy
Summary: In the wake of Mary's death and John's blame, Sherlock goes a whole month overindulging on heroin and without any support from either John or Mary. He needs help and even he desperately hopes John will give it to him.The story between the scenes of Sherlock season four. Can be read as standalone without the previous works in this collection. Can be read out of order.





	1. Death in the Family

**Author's Note:**

> Last season of Sherlock. Here I am again. Nobody was surprised.

When she jumped in front of him, Sherlock was just too slow to push her out of the way again. That was why it was his fault. The rest of his life, everything moved so slow. He’d escaped death from jumping off a building. He should have been able to prevent this. 

He can’t look at John as he kneels down on the floor. Beside her. Beside her body. Everyone in that room knows it’s too late, that even having a doctor on hand won’t stop the internal bleeding and probable collapsed lung that’s going to kill her. It’s his fault. He can’t move closer to the two of them. Physically, he’s sure that if he commanded his legs to move, they would obey him, but he can’t manage to put himself in the same heap as them, even when Mary’s gaze stretches out towards him. It’s imperative that he maintains the distance from the two of them to the one of him, keeping them separate, and removed. 

It doesn’t work. She doesn’t die calmly like they do on the telly. Her last breaths are gasps, like she’s trying for air, but she can’t because the blood that’s meant to keep the oxygen moving around her system is all over the floor and John’s hands and the metallic smell of it fills the room, and why dear god isn’t it driving everyone else as mad as it is him? 

John’s keening howls are the first thing in the room that make Sherlock feel like he’s not the only one being affected by the death in front of them. Had everyone just not realised she was no longer breathing? John’s keening takes care of that. The noise that passes from him is like the sound equivalent of all the blood: brutal and unavoidable and so very, very real. 

“You made a vow.”

Sherlock’s heart resides somewhere in the vicinity of his throat at John’s angry words, even though he knows that physiologically and completely not possible, even after the improbable has been deducted. He turns his head away, but even that doesn’t help. He realises, in that moment, that nothing’s going to help this feeling. 

After she died, it felt like his heart stopped in time with hers, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to go on with a heart that feels like it’s metaphorically stopped. 

“Excuse me,” he murmurs, under his breath, but nonetheless everyone else nearby him moves out of his way. He doesn’t look over to see if John sees him make his exit. Sherlock can’t imagine how John thinks that anyone else in that room exists, other than Mary.

Sherlock is aware he makes a fine, bold figure, his height already on his side, but the bulkiness of his jacket padding him out in ways his physique wouldn’t allow unaided. He’s thought of it before, and merely uses it to his advantage now. He doesn’t look anyone in the eye as he exits the building, doesn’t make any attempt at conversation. This is why he’s intentionally brusque, to the point of rude. This is what people expect of him. Now, when he needs it, he doesn’t disappoint. 

Thoughts are screaming about in his head, far too fast for even him to keep track of. He knows there’ll be a mental hangover later on when his mind catches up to all the details that he can’t will himself to turn himself off. It’s a curse he’s been born with. But he doesn’t have the brain space to even appreciate that, right then. 

A taxi came to a stop in front of him almost as soon as he raises his hand. It’s a driver that recognises his face, either from John’s blog, or has probably driven him about before. Good. It means there is no need for discussion. 

“Baker Street?” the driver asked him. 

Sherlock nods curtly and lets the man go. 

*

Sherlock knows he can’t go to John in his suffering. No no, he can’t go to John. Sherlock loved her but John, John was married to her. So he can’t go to John.

Time was, he would have gone to Mary for just this sort of confusion over emotional matters. Sure, he would have texted both John and Mary at the first time, but Mary would have been the one of them who texted back. John would have said he was feeding Rosie, or something. 

He picks up his violin and begins to play, going through at least two dozen of his favourite musical compositions before he puts it down in disgust. He can’t think of any of those without thinking of John. John’s heard every one of them, and commented on most of them, in the time that they lived in this house together. 

It’s late in the night, and he knows he wouldn’t have played at this time had John still been living with him. Unless he was deliberately trying to bait him, anyway. 

Sherlock lifts the bow and tries again. 

John. John.

_John._

The instrument is put back into its case less gently than it deserves. Sherlock knows it’s not a good idea when he makes his first reply to the last of Irene Adler’s messages to him. There’s a reason he’s been keeping his continued contact with her from John. Several reasons. 

However, right now, he needs something that’s outside his own head and outside of the life he shared with John and Mary. 

WHERE SHALL WE MEET? SH

The message is written and sent before Sherlock can second guess it. Tomorrow; tomorrow will be about John and Mary. He just needs this small piece of comfort to steel himself first. 

It’s only moments until a return message comes through, and then it’s only an address, accompanied by the now familiar ring tone of The Woman moaning. 

Sherlock’s face is deliberately blank as he picks up his phone, grabs his jacket and puts it on, then sweeps out of the apartment and into the late night London air and next available cab.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock tells himself he’s waiting to see John again until he can be sure that he will be there for John before he goes over to the house he once shared with Mary. It’s not going to do any good if he goes over there only to find he can’t cope with the sight of John without the presence of Mary beside him. 

But he knows that he’s just waiting until the rage and initial stages of grief are passed. He doesn’t want to ever see John look him in the eye that way again. Once was more than enough. 

This resolve, however, only lasts as long as until he finds and watches the video that Mary left for him. He can’t help but watch it, savouring the image of her again even as it gut punches him. He wishes he could have that moment again, that moment in which he would react faster this time, would move heaven and earth, would somehow be the one who didn’t let her take that bullet before he could take it first. 

He doesn’t have a death wish, but now that he has people he cares about, he doesn’t want to outlive them. It’s just a sensible choice. His current state of emotional paralysis is proof of that. 

In the end, he doesn’t need to worry that John will look at him with that mix of hatred and accusation again because it’s not John who answers the door, but Molly. 

“He ... said he’d r... that he’d rather have anyone but you,” Molly tells him. She speaks in her sweet, kind words, complete with Rosie there on her hip. None of it softens the blow. Sherlock stumbles back half a pace, presses his lips together, averts his eyes so she can’t see the pain.

It’s too late. Molly’s seen. Molly sees far more than he anticipated when they first met, and he’s more than transparent right now. 

He was wrong. Being looked at with hatred and accusation was less bad than hearing from someone else that John wanted help from anyone but him because at least John had been _looking_ at him when he reminded Sherlock of his vow. 

One of his many vows.

One of the many vows that he hadn’t been able to keep.

Faced with yet another thing he cannot do—see John—Sherlock turns around numbly and returns to 221B Baker Street. He doesn’t bother to read the letter John wrote him. He keeps it next to the envelope that holds Mary’s video. It seems poetic somehow. 

He wonders whether John made himself absent because he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from hitting him again, despite the vow John made Sherlock that he would never to do that again. Because John’s so much better at making vows that he can keep.

And, at the same time, Sherlock feels himself slipping.

When he gets home, he watches her video again.

And again.

And again.

_Go to hell, Sherlock._

And that’s the moment when his mind palace twists against him again. Apparently trauma just does that to him now. Whatever the reason, it’s inconvenient as hell.

The star figure in his altered mind palace isn’t Moriarty this time. Sherlock made that mistake before, and recently. Now Moriarty is so far from the back of his mind that it takes him several days to remember that the criminal mastermind was where all of this started.

Sherlock never had this sort of thing happen to him before he met John, but something about the connection he shares with the other man, and then Mary, have broken something in him, changed something in him that he can’t simply change back. He _feels_ now. It doesn’t seem to matter how much he wishes it away.

He turns off the recording of John’s dead wife then turns off the telly for good measure. 

“Go to hell, Sherlock.” 

Mary’s voice comes to him despite the fact that he’s turned off the recording. It doesn’t matter whether he turns around or not. She’s in his mind with him, not out in the living room. 

“Go right into Hell, and make it look like you mean it,” she speaks again.

Sherlock doesn’t need her to recite the entirety of the disc for him. He already has it memorised.

“Mary, you were never this spiteful in real life,” Sherlock murmurs to her, trying to keep some kind of a handle on this discussion.

“Bullshit,” Mary says, but she’s smiling. The fair skin around her eyes crinkles, her lips widen, and she’s smiling.

Sherlock, despite himself, feels his lips tugging in return. Even John can’t quite make him smile like this. Like co-conspirators. 

He doesn’t say how much he misses her, how much it should have been him, not her, who took that bullet. Either one of those statements, and many others like it, would be mindlessly sentimental. She wouldn’t appreciate it from him. That was always what John had been for. So he said something she’d appreciate if he’d ever said it while she was still alive. “You were almost as intelligent as me.” 

“That’s why you’re going to do exactly as I tell you,” Mary replies, her smile smug, her gaze knowing. 

Sherlock knows it too. There’s no reason to argue with her, even less because he’s fully cognisant that she’s a figment of his own mind. What she’s asking him to do isn’t something so hard for him to comply with, because escape is exactly what he needs right now. He can’t have John, he can’t have Mary, but there’s something else he can still have, something else that wants him.

Ever so calmly he walks into the kitchen, and he shoots up.


	3. Addiction

He doesn’t leave his apartment for a whole month other than to find and grab Billy Wiggins from the squat he’s living in, then offer him free room and board at his house in exchange for the heroin and descent into hell.

The first couple of times, it’s kind of great. It’s a pleasure he hasn’t allowed himself to experience for what feels like too long. It helps him to think in ways he hadn’t been before, and reminds him that he was going to write a paper on more possible medicinal uses for opiates beyond morphine. 

But then, as always happens, his reliance upon the drug drags even Sherlock’s superior mind down, down, down, and Sherlock slowly begins to get frustrated. 

Which, of course, he attempts to solve by injecting more heroin into other sites on his body. Doesn’t want any of the veins to collapse, after all. Especially if all this is to get John to save him. 

Some days it’s a struggle to remember why he wants John to save him. 

Some days the only thing he can think of is the last time John weaned him off his ‘self medication’. Mary was completely right in her estimation of her husband. John always was a sucker for taking up a cause, for giving of his help in any way he could. It was what made him such a good doctor. 

And… everything else. 

Night terrors come back to him with a vengeance he hasn’t experienced since he first came back after the so called ‘Reichenbach fall’. More than once, he wakes up with terror and cravings pawing at him, demanding his time and attention. 

In his dreams, it’s not Mary holding a gun on him. It’s Sherlock, holding a gun on her. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, before the gun shot sounds. Useless words, just as useless as the way that she slumps at his feet. He glances back at her before walking off. She doesn’t have the resilience to get back up again like he had.

In the next scene, he’s the one who’s on his knees, in a pool of blood that both Mary and John have created. The bullet that was meant for one went through Mary, then John in both their attempts to save him.

Who was he to require so much saving from the ones he supposedly loved? Surely his life wasn’t worth both of theirs. He didn’t know how to quantify it.

The alien sounds making their way into the room come from Sherlock’s throat in the moments before he wakes up.

“JOHN!” he cries out, waking himself. “Mary…” he chokes out.

Billy never wakes up to the screams in the night. Sherlock’s sure he’s used to much worse from some of the places he’s stayed before. 

It never takes him long to remember where he is and what’s going on around him, but those few seconds every time he wakes up are the finest parts of this hell he’s created. 

He has to learn how to regulate his breathing on his own, how to utilise all the coping strategies he’s picked up in recovery before now. But it’s too hard.

So he starts learning to get by on even less sleep than he ever had.

He puts Mary’s disc back in its envelope and sticks it back up on the mantelpiece beside John’s unopened letter, and determines he doesn’t need to look at either again. Even with his impaired mind at this stage, he can still remember every bleeding word she said to him after death. And he doesn’t need the reminder of John when everything he’s doing right now is to get him back in his life.

He wonders only whether Mary left another disc for John to watch after her death. She must have done. Surely. She loved John just as much, if not more. Surely more. He reminds himself again: they were married. That’s supposed to mean something.

Sherlock knows that Mycroft is watching him, but for some strange reason he doesn’t come in to save his younger brother from himself, even as the facial hair creeps over his features, and his weight starts to slough off. The look in his eyes is wild whenever he looks in the mirror, so he stops looking in the mirror. Similar with his hair, though at least sometimes he remembers to wash it.

He doesn’t think that any of his brother’s cameras point in the direction that he had Mary’s video playing in, but maybe the audio track was enough to inform Mycroft that it would be a bad idea to distract Sherlock from his current goal. But it’s certain that he watches. Oh yes, he watches. 

Two weeks into the game, he’s so bored he can’t believe himself. Which means that it’s time to begin the plan in earnest. Starting with Mrs. Hudson. At least that leads to half an hour of entertainment as he roams the house, yelling out her name. 

While she passes him his tea, he passes her his note. It’s the only way that he can make sure that Mycroft won’t know what he’s planning ahead of time. The note is simple, with only an address, a date, a time, and his own initials. 

Mrs. Hudson gazes at him a moment, as if considering something, then she nods her head as if this is all she needs to know. 

“Okay,” she decides brightly, then wonders to another part of his house and leaves him to his own devices.

The only thing Sherlock adds when he message Molly, is a request for an ambulance at the same date and time.

Three weeks, and although Sherlock prepared for it, timed everything up to the minute, the cravings are tugging at him but Billy hasn’t gotten back from his supplier as yet. Sherlock isn’t enjoying the game as much as he was at the beginning. There’s only so much staring at the walls that a man can do. It’s a wonder that Sherlock has lasted even three weeks of this. 

“What’s taking him so long?” Sherlock grouses. He was really going to have to go back to developing his own strains in the kitchen so he’d always have a fall back and so this wouldn’t happen again. 

Both he and Mary know that Sherlock isn’t talking about Billy Wiggins. 

“He’s stubborn,” Mary says quietly, gently. She still has the same indulgent tone in her voice that she always had when talking about John. Her gaze softens, and there’s this soft smile on her lips that are all indications of love. Sherlock knows he’s fabricating all of it, but it also makes him wonder how many of these tell tale signs are on his own face when he’s talking about John. “It’s going to take him some time. You mustn’t give up.”

“I’m not going to give up!” Sherlock explodes, because what does she think of him? What possible reason could he have for giving up on this plan? He forgets to remember that it isn’t what Mary thinks of him that’s being rooted back to him right then. She is, of course, a figment of his mind palace. But more and more she seems like a real companion. “I need another case,” he yells into the air, storming towards his phone to where he can call Lestrade.

Lestrade is less than helpful, saying that he can’t let him sit in on a case when he’s high. 

“How the bloody hell do you know I’m high?” he demands over their phone connection, but he knows. 

He takes to glaring at every possible place in Baker Street that Mycroft could have set up cameras. 

“You’re doing this!” he tells his brother at length. “You’re doing this to keep me imprisoned in my own home. My mind is being wasted. This marvellous mind is being wasted just because you… you…!”

Later on, Billy’s back, and Sherlock’s lying across his chair with a violin in his hands that he intended to play.

*

Sherlock loses count of the number of texts he writes for John and then never sends. He makes another last vow before scrapping it: He’ll never delete another one of John’s texts again. 

Thoughts of skittering onto the wrong end of the line with regards to an overdose cross his mind again and again. Since John isn’t there to knock some sense into him, and he frankly wouldn’t care if Mycroft tried to do the same, he’s stuck with having to keep to The Plan on his own. 

That doesn’t make it easier. He pines for the loss of both John and Mary even as he remembers that he doesn’t have to pine for Mary. She’s there every time he thinks of her. He only has to close his eyes to—

No. He’s already getting hooked on one addictive substance. There’s no point to getting addicted to Mary’s imaginary presence within his mind palace as well. She’s dead. 

Dead.

“Billy!” Sherlock yells, when Mary gazes at him sadly and he can no longer take it. “Where’s my next dose?”


	4. His John

When Sherlock comes up against his sister for the first time in years, he only realises later that Billy was right. He had taken things too far, skirting too close to an overdose he both did and didn’t want. 

However, what was a heroin induced misunderstanding against a lifetime of not remembering the sister who had once traumatised him? Maybe it wasn’t the heroin’s fault after all.

She must have known how addled he was by drugs before she made her move, coming into his home and pretending to be Culverton Smith’s daughter. Again, it was only later that he truly understood how entrenched she’d become in the lives of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. 

Even Mycroft had never managed to be quite that devious. He was the only one of the three of them who would never have relished in the efforts of such disguise. 

A month ago, John placed a helium balloon in his chair in place of himself while he’d helped Mrs. Hudson with her Sudoku. Sherlock had pretended not to notice simply because he didn’t find the joke to be funny. 

More than anything, Sherlock wishes for that time, wishes he could do it over again, could show John how much his absence means to him. He wishes for that balloon, reminding him that John cared enough to try to make those jokes, even when Sherlock pretended not to notice them. 

He’s only paying half attention to what his mind is trying to tell him.

Perhaps that’s the other reason why he missed seeing through the disguise to who she really was. God knew he was slow enough in picking up a dozen other details that his mind tried to advise him of.

While she’d indulged him on chips and a walk, she’d even given him a hint he’d been too far gone to miss. 

_Big Brother’s watching._

Well, she would know about that, even better than Sherlock. 

Instead, he was proud that he’d managed to force his weakened body into a walk that had exhausted him only slightly less than it had gratified him by throwing out a taunt to his dear brother.

Instead, what he’s more conscious of is the fact that he recognises suicidal intension in the person in front of him because it’s the same thing he’d see in the mirror before he stopped looking into them. 

Regardless of all of this, she gives him what he needs to go forward to the next part of his plan with John.

*

The two men arrive at the scene in time for Culverton to walk out of the car and hug him. 

Sherlock allows this for two reasons: One, to grab his phone and send a message to his daughter from it. And two, because as sad as it is, and as much as Sherlock despises himself for needing it now, hugs aren’t a part of the relationship he shares with John anymore. Might never be again. 

Because he won’t allow himself to linger on such thoughts, he just focuses on the physical aspect of the situation: he’d gotten enough used to hugs from John and from Mary that he now craves the physical contact. It’s another addiction, just one more to add to that growing list. 

He sighs under his breath, before drawing himself up and following Smith into Village Studios.

They visit the kids, and that’s where Sherlock actually worries that Smith is going to give himself up. In front of everyone. Even the nurses are looking uncomfortable. He should know; he puts that expression on most peoples’ faces.

Worst of all, John looks like he’s starting to consider that Sherlock might be right. Already. Sherlock narrows his eyes. It’s not that this would be a bad thing. It’s just that it’s not the right part of the plan. 

Or is it that he just wants at least one more hit before the plan comes to fruition?

Sherlock shakes his head just slightly as if to dislodge that thought. It’s been in his head ever since John brought his attention to it. They’re in the hospital now. Maybe if he could just duck away…

But, no. Smith just has to show them his favourite room. Predictably enough, it’s the morgue. 

And that’s when things really start to become unravelled. 

Smith’s talking to John, insulting him about being a doctor and, frankly, not paying Sherlock any further attention at all in that minute. 

“There are two possible explanations for what’s going on here. Either I’m a serial killer… or Sherlock Holmes is off his tits on drugs, hmm? Delusional paranoia about a public personality? That’s not so special. It’s not even new!”

Sherlock lifts his chin and stares narrowly down his nose at Smith as the man finally deigns to pay him attention again, speaking to him as if he’s a child, or at least as if John isn’t in the room as well, right behind him. 

“I think you need to, er… tell your faithful little friend how you’re wasting his time because you’re too high to know what’s real any more.”

It really is too perfect a situation for him to pass up, as it happens. 

Sherlock knows exactly what John’s thinking when he goes Culverton Smith with a scalpel: He shot Magnussen before this. All the signs were there. He has to take Smith’s side. Sherlock forces his hand before anything else can change. 

This is absolute rock bottom for Sherlock. The apex of his plan. 

It also doesn’t hurt to stop that blasted laughing and show Culverton Smith that Sherlock Holmes is not someone to be trifled with. 

Sherlock shakes his head, knowing that that’s not a thought he would normally have were he in his right mind. So many of his thoughts no longer seem like his own. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember this is all part of a plan.

John. 

John. He always puts the other man square in front of his mind whenever he’s in danger of losing himself. Mary nods on in approval. 

“Sherlock? Are you all right? Sherlock? Are you okay?”

Sherlock glances quickly to John and away again, narrowly keeping himself from smiling grimly. Now he begins to see. Now the plan comes rushing towards its final fruition. 

He takes a breath, and says, “Watch him, he’s got a knife!”

Smith didn’t have a knife, a fact of which he instantly declaims.

Laughing, still laughing. Sherlock’s eyes clench shut, but not for long. He can’t afford not to pay attention to this scene playing out for more than a second or two at a time. 

“I saw you take it,” Sherlock says, trying to sound like he’s in control of the situation, trying to sound like he’s trying to sound like he’s in control of the situation. 

Honestly, it’s not a very difficult part for him to play. 

“Look behind his back!” Sherlock instructs of John.

John looks at Sherlock as though he’s crazy. Which, of course, is a part of the plan. 

“I saw you take it! I saw you!”

With a deliberate and passionate movement, Sherlock gestures towards him with the scalpel he’s holding in his right hand, and for the first time, finally, John speaks. 

“Whoa whoa whoa! Whoa, Sherlock, do you wanna put that down?”

It’s not the brightest of sentiments he’s ever brought to the table, but things are happening fast, now, and Sherlock supposes he can’t blame John for not keeping up with the game. The last game between he and Mary. The game the two of them fought to keep him from. 

Until now. 

Sherlock’s eyes are wide, his arm shaking, and it’s a bit too authentic for comfort, but it’s all he’s got left. He puts everything he’s got into this last performance. If he fucks it up now, he’ll have nothing left. No Smith. No John. No Mary…

He can’t concentrate. Stupid, dumb, murderous Smith won’t “Stop laughing at me.”

He hisses the words out, but they don’t have the desired effect he wished for. 

“He’s not laughing, Sherlock,” says John hesitantly, causing Sherlock’s gaze to flick across to him in shock that doesn’t last, because how can it be that John can’t hear the laughter? It’s echoing around the room, entering Sherlock’s head. He’s surrounded by it, can’t concentrate, can’t concentrate, the mind palace is threatening to turn on him again, now at this most important point of the play and he can’t have it, can’t have that, he needs to be here right now, be in control, in control—

“STOP LAUGHING AT ME!” he demands of Smith. It’s time to elevate his plans. He can’t leave them any longer, not under these conditions, not at all. 

He launches himself towards Smith, with his right hand forward and the scalpel aimed at him.

Only distantly is he aware of Smith’s daughter—daughter? Fake daughter, real daughter?—screaming in the background. She doesn’t matter. Only John, only John. And John’s grabbing him, touching him again for the first time since before Mary’s death. 

Before Sherlock has even a moment to bask in that knowledge, the scalpel’s knocked out his hand and John’s seizing his coat in both hands. He thrusts the two of them towards the wall on the other side of the room. 

John’s completely focused on him when he should be focused on Smith. It’s not his turn yet. His turn comes later. After the case is closed and Sherlock needs to be saved. 

Far from saving him, Sherlock feels pain as his back slams hard against one of the cabinet doors. Not once, not twice. Each time yelling in his face.

“Stop it now!”

Funny Sherlock could have screamed the same words back at him had he not been winded at the first impact. 

He gapes at John, hardly registering that Smith and the daughter both stare at them in shock. 

A slap to the left side of his face causes Sherlock to break eye contact with them and turn his whole attention back on John, who finally breaks his own vow: never to punch him again. Sherlock can’t manage to focus too much on that. He’s too strapped with not blacking out, too scared of what he’ll find there if he does.

It’s grief, he tells himself. It’s only grief. John isn’t hitting him for the sake of hitting him, but rather to move past the pain of every breath in every day. 

Sherlock’s actually grateful for this moment, for the physical pain that allows him distraction from the exact same thing. He can feel the skin of his brow splitting, smell the mingled blood from his face and John’s knuckles that are already raw and bloody.

He’s going to hate himself for this afterwards. It’s going to be his job to make sure he doesn’t hate himself for this afterwards. 

That job seems too hard, too much, even for Sherlock Holmes in this state.

John’s yelling at him, saying something about a game, but Sherlock struggles not to pass out as John kicks his body hard and more than once. 

Only after two medical staff run in, forcibly dragging John away from him, does Sherlock try to come back to the scene. 

Culiver Smith is still standing there, right next to John again. Satisfied that Smith hasn’t gotten away just yet, he returns his focus towards John and begins to take up the job to not allow John to hate himself. 

“It’s okay,” he pants. “Let him do what he wants. He’s entitled. I killed his wife.”

“Yes, you did,” John agrees immediately.

Sherlock breathes out shakily through his nose. Even though he thinks it, even though he’s lived with it every day since her death, he didn’t expect John to answer with such quick certainty. His John, his kind John. Sherlock knows better than anyone that he has a temper, but this is a man who’s been pushed too far. 

He doesn’t know anymore if he can actually reach out to this John.


	5. I don't belong here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some recommended reading for this chapter - 
> 
> [ Creep -- Radiohead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk)

He doesn’t have the strength or the energy, especially after almost being suffocated on top of everything else, to maintain his pride and game face after the only ones left in the room are John and Sherlock.

In hindsight, this may not have been the brightest idea in the world, given what had happened during their last altercation. 

“John?” he croaks out, unsure, still, whether this is his John, or the one he doesn’t know how to deal with. He doesn’t take his eyes off him, though. He can keep himself from doing that much.

John takes a single step towards him. Sherlock does his best not to flinch, mostly because he thinks flinching would hurt too much. 

“I’m sorry. No.” John shakes his head, hmming in that way he does when agitated. “No, sorry doesn’t cover it. Doesn’t cover what I did.”

“Don’t bother yourself with it,” Sherlock rasps out.

“I will bother myself,” John says emphatically.

Sherlock doesn’t have the strength of focus to be able to argue it with him. It hurts to breath right now. It hurts to move.

John exhales harshly, and a flicker of Sherlock’s eyelid tells of the harsh sound in the room bringing a spike of anxiety. It’s too minute for John to notice, which is exactly as he wishes.

“Jeez, where are the doctors in this place?” John swings around to look at the door behind him. “You’d think one of them would come around here after you were almost suffocated in their own hospital!” John turns back to look at Sherlock. His jaw clenches. He looks about to start to say something, then stops, but doesn’t stop looking over Sherlock.

It’s his John. Sherlock recognises it now. With all the jolted movements, elevated volume, he was still pushed beyond his limits, but he was standing on the same side as Sherlock now, not opposed to him. It has come time for Sherlock to be the one being saved. 

Sherlock closes his eyes and allows himself to relax as much as his body will allow.

As he lets a gentle breath out through his teeth and relaxes against the not particularly comfortable foam mattress, he thinks to himself, Thank God. 

“Unless…” John finally seems to be coming around to the thought he’s been so on the fence about saying. Sherlock barely moves his head to the side to look at him again. “I don’t suppose you want me to have a look over you?”

It’s a question because both men know that John’s hands on Sherlock right now may not be welcome. Not just because Sherlock doesn’t like to be touched. But because, after everything he’s been through, being touched by someone who has so recently beaten him until he was dragged away might cause him to suffer flashbacks that are entirely involuntary. 

Sherlock honestly doesn’t know the right way to answer this question. He buys himself a moment of time by blinking before he opens his mouth.

Thankfully, that’s when a doctor arrives. He doesn’t look at John as the doctor, leans over him and gently pries one eyelid open wide, then the other. He doesn’t want to see whether there’s relief of disappointment in his best friend’s gaze. He certainly doesn’t want John to see what’s in his. 

“Any trouble breathing?” the doctor asks, having obviously been appraised of the recent suffocation before stepping into the room. 

“No.” Sherlock continues looking up at the ceiling, past the left side of the doctor’s head, nowhere near where John was hovering. Usually, he would have had a quip ready. There was a part of him that especially enjoyed showing doctors their own inferior intellect. Hadn’t that been his and John’s own beginnings?

Right now, however, the urge couldn’t have been further from him. 

The doctor checks Sherlock’s vitals, adjusting the medication through the IV. Sherlock hopes that if he continued looking away from everyone, John won’t notice the adjusted levels of morphine that the doctor returned back to normal. He also hopes the doctor wouldn’t mention it. Especially since it can so easily be explained away as a nurse’s error.

Still, the doctor gives Sherlock a stern look, which he patently decides to ignore. Sure enough, John notices _that_. Thankfully, he at least waits until the doctor is out of the hospital room before talking to Sherlock again. 

“What was that?” His voice is deceptively soft, words crisply stated.

Sherlock still doesn’t look at him, doesn’t want to engage in anything that’s likely to make John lose his temper again.

“Don’t ask questions to which you do not want the answer, John,” he says half heartedly, his eyes half lidded.

“Don’t talk to me—” John cuts himself off, swearing softly under his breath, then begins again. “ _Please_ don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Sherlock.” He chews on his lip for a moment. 

Sherlock continues to count the notches he can see in the ceiling. It is sorely in need of a repaint. Sherlock absently goes about working out how long it was since the last time repainting had been done in this room and thus, likely, the rest of the hospital. 

“You didn’t tell the doctors you had a heroin problem,” John says, answering his own question. 

Sherlock would have inclined his head but, again, pain. Which he only has a subsidised way of dealing with now. At least until John decides to leave. 

His jaw clenches. At the same time as he wants John to leave, he desperately doesn’t want John to leave. 

“I advised them that I had been mugged and dosed with heroin. It was out of my control. On top of that, the only pain management medication I don’t have an allergy to is codeine.”

John hesitates. Sherlock can make that out even from the corner of his eye. 

“You… don’t have an allergy to any pain medications,” he says at length, and after consideration. Because he was a doctor who knew Sherlock’s medical history. None of the doctors in this hospital who have seen him have that advantage.

“Indeed.” Sherlock closes his eyes again. The pain is becoming quite… remarkable. 

Across from him, he can hear the sound of a chair shuffling, and then John’s weight settling within it. 

Even though he makes it a habit not to ask the obvious, Sherlock asks, “What are you doing?”

He very clearly makes out the sound of John licking his lips nervously before he replies. “Staying right here. Molly’s got Rosie. I hope you don’t think I’m leaving you alone here.” _After what almost just happened_

John doesn’t say it, but it’s in the room there between them all the same. 

For once, Sherlock doesn’t argue. He thinks he’s in too much pain to be able to manage to sleep, but perhaps John thinks he does over the next several hours. The slow, rhythmic sound of John turning the pages of the book he’s apparently brought with him are soothing. Sherlock allows the rest of the world to fade away, just for this brief period of time. 

As it turns out, he’d severely underestimated the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation on his abused body.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s hopelessly awkward when John brings him home. Sherlock tried to convince him he didn’t need a baby sitter, was even harsher than he thought it was reasonable to be just to get John to go back and pick his daughter up from Molly. 

For the first time in their relationship, John didn’t bite back defensively. He simply waited till Sherlock stopped speaking, then asked, “Are you ready to go?”

Now they’re standing outside of Baker Street together, and Sherlock doesn’t know what to do. It’s confronting enough to think of walking back in there after the last month. He doesn’t know if he’s going to find Billy still hanging around inside. He doesn’t know what he thinks of Mrs. Hudson anymore, or what she thinks of him. 

None of this should bother him, but it is. It’s all bothering him.

Because he doesn’t want to look bad in front of John.

John is too much to handle all on his own. The two of them are going out of their way to touch each other. Sherlock’s going out of his way not to mention it because he’s still not completely sure what his body will do if confronted with John’s touch. They’re at a stalemate. And the discomfort of it is telling. 

The withdrawals symptoms are much worse than the ones he remembers from last time, both probably due to the frequency of doses as well as the length of time his body grew used to having it. 

They hit him even before the taxi returns them to Baker Street. By the time they’re inside, Sherlock is having to expend a lot of energy just to keep from bending over forward with muscle cramps. 

“You’ve done it now,” he tells John, attempting lightness. “You’ve seen me home. Made sure I got here safe. Now you can go.”

Billy isn’t here, but Sherlock wonders whether there’s anything left of the meth lab they created, or whether Mrs. Hudson’s scrubbed it all away. Maybe she’ll show some sympathy towards him. After all, she was married to a drug dealer.

On the other hand, things got pretty out of hand right before she handcuffed him in the boot of her car. Maybe not. 

“Sherlock…” John shakes his head, looking sorrowfully towards him as Sherlock glances back his way. “I’m a doctor. You didn’t think I’d leave the hospital without making sure to bring a prescription of buprenorphine. Did you?”

_Buprenorphine: a gentler detox method than methadone. Can prevent or reduce symptoms of withdrawal._

Of course Sherlock had heard of it. What he hadn’t expected was for John to make it so easily available to him. 

But now that he knows… “Give it to me.”

John looks at him sternly. “How severe are the cramps you’re experiencing?” he asks, not unsympathetically. 

Sherlock wonders whether John blams himself for his current episode of heroin addiction, like he blamed Sherlock for Mary’s death. Weren’t they a merry cycle of blame between the three of them. 

It had never been like this before she was gone. 

With palpable resentment, Sherlock gives John a full accounting of his symptoms. John measures out a dosage that’s appropriate for his situation, then marches Sherlock upstairs to make sure he goes to bed. 

*

John isn’t there when he wakes up, but Lestrade is. Mrs. Hudson has obviously been by; Lestrade has tea in his hands. Still steaming. Obviously recent. 

He looks up as Sherlock walks into the room, and the two men stare at each other for a short moment, before Lestrade clears his throat and looks away. 

Sherlock doesn’t. “You’re sitting in my chair,” he announces, as if Lestrade doesn’t already know. 

“Well, I thought, you weren’t using it…” Lestrade starts.

Sherlock waves his excuses away, uninterested in hearing them. “Why are you here?”

“John didn’t… want you to be alone.”

Sherlock narrows his eyes. “Why aren’t you at work?” he demands, because he isn’t ready yet to handle this strong evidence of John caring about him. Certainly not in front of Lestrade. 

“Brought work here with me, didn’t I?” Lestrade says, standing up finally and leaving Sherlock’s seat vacant. Sherlock doesn’t spare it a look. 

“What work?” Sherlock asks impatiently.

Lestrade’s eyebrows rise. “You could be a bit thankful for it, you know,” he murmurs, as if it isn’t the way the two of them have always interacted. 

“I’ll decide on whether I’m thankful after I’ve seen the work to be done,” Sherlock utters, gaze catching on the folder that Lestrade brought with him, and sweeping it up before Lestrade can get his hands on it again. 

Without looking at the other man again, he sweeps into his chair and begins scanning through the files and documents. It isn’t until the sweats, followed quickly by cramps, distract him and remind him annoyingly of his body’s current needs. 

Lestrade actually seems to notice after the seventh time Sherlock shifts in his chair, his face making a grimace that isn’t the result of what he was thinking. 

“John said you might need this while I’m here,” Lestrade says quiety, holding up a tablet that’s wrapped in its foil.

Sherlock takes the buprenorphine without looking at Lestrade. After the medication has dissolved under his tongue, he begins to talk about the case as though the interlude never occurred.


	7. Chapter 7

John’s back again the following day, just as expected. Sherlock, of course, shies from the very idea that he could actually need John’s presence, be dependant on him like that when John already has an actual dependant: his daughter. 

“We’re all taking it in turns to keep you off the sweeties,” John tells him simply, with a nod towards the door into what had been, until recently, a meth lab. 

Mrs. Hudson had been very thorough indeed. Sherlock isn’t sure he likes this new information about his land lady. 

Sherlock looks at John for a while, hoping none of the feelings he are showing on his face at after John’s admission. He figured that there was something like that going on, after all. It was only sensible, and surely what he would have suggested himself had it been any other recent drug user. 

But, at the same time, this is Sherlock Holmes. 

“I thought we were just hanging out.” He tries not to sound hurt, but knows he doesn’t manage it. 

“Molly will be here in twenty minutes,” John says, hardly reacting to the hurt that he can’t have missed.

This time, Sherlock can’t manage to get around some of the bitterness welling up inside of him. In the back of his mind, he hears Mary tsk at him and ignores her. “Oh, I do think I can last twenty minutes without supervision.”

“Well, if you’re sure.” John puts his hands on the chair arms and stands up.

That isn’t been what Sherlock meant. Not at all. He wanted to make John see that he wasn’t an addict in need of supervision, not that he needed John to go. If John stayed, he wanted it to be because John wanted to stay here, not because he felt he had to. It’s this damned awkwardness. Sherlock has no idea how to handle the state of awkwardness that had arisen between him. He always just ploughed his way through people until they responded the way he wished and expected them too. Apparently, nothing’s going to move John from his role of care taker to Sherlock Holmes; that, and nothing else. 

Sherlock finds, belatedly, that he doesn’t like this last aspect of Mary’s plan.

Mary sighs at him. “Well, I can’t be expected to think of everything, can I?”

Sherlock ignores her again. He will continue to do so until such a time as John shows the same mannerisms of seeing a Mary shaped spectre in the room. 

“I helped Lestrade on a case,” Sherlock says, speaking quickly, intently. “I’m taking the medication you prescribed. In short, I am doing everything just as you wish.” He doesn’t look at John as he says this. It’s too much of an admission. An admission he isn’t sure he wants to make. So, he curls his lips to add, “And it’s still not enough.”

“I don’t blame you for Mary’s death,” John says, surprising him. It’s as if the words are pulled from him without John being able to control it. 

There is surprise on John’s face, but that is nothing compared to the feelings erupting within Sherlock. John didn’t raise his voice, but Sherlock feels the power of those words rush through the room between them. 

“I… see,” he starts, hardly able to consider what else he should say in the face of such words. It has become such a part of his existence already—that Mary died because of him and that is the wedge driven between himself and John—that he doesn’t immediately know what to do with this piece of information. 

Mary rolls her eyes at his apparent ineptitude. Ineptitude is unfortunately Sherlock’s word for it, not Mary’s.

“I can’t…” John exhales roughly, turning away from Sherlock as he palms his whole face before dragging the hand down. The corners of his mouth sag before he looks towards Sherlock again. “I can’t look at you without seeing how I struck you.” He shakes his head, looking towards the stitches on his brow, the burst vein in his eye. He’s going to have to see an optometrist about this. It’s been remiss of him not to do it so far. 

“John…” Sherlock starts, but he stays sitting down. 

“No.” John stretches out a hand between them. “I know I already apologised for this. I know you said not to bother myself with it.” He puts on a ludicrous tone of voice at that point, which Sherlock realises is meant to be a parody of his own voice. 

“I do not sound like that,” Sherlock utters immediately. 

John gazes at him incredulously. “What I did to you was unforgiveable.” He states these words slowly, clearly. It would have almost been calmly said, if not for the wildness in his eyes. “It was not the actions of a friend, never mind…”

Sherlock fills in the words that John can’t bring himself to say, Never mind more than that.

John firms his lips and looks away from Sherlock again. “I almost wish that I did think you killed my wife. But no. It was her choice. No one made her do it. No one could ever make her do anything…”

Mary’s smiling at the back of his head, and Sherlock finds he can’t begrudge it. Gazing down at the carpet between them, Sherlock makes a decision not to tell him of the night terrors that show a grief maddened John unable to keep from chasing Sherlock down until he captures him and does… terrible… unsightly things that Sherlock wished he couldn’t imagine. 

But he will say something. Still without looking up at John, he advises, “The last time we spoke on this, I told you not to bother yourself with it. That is because I wish I could do the same.”

Sherlock chances looking up to him, to see how he has taken his statement. John stares back at him, horror in his gaze. It appears that Sherlock was not as adept as he’d hoped in hiding the things he did not say. He clears his throat.

“Which is to say, there are things will take time to heal… for both of us.” Sherlock pauses, which gives time for John to swallow, then nod his head. “In saving my life, she conferred a value on it. It is a currency I do not know how to spend. I need to decide what that means.”

There’s a moaning sound from the table beside him. Sherlock does nothing, can only hope it was a soft enough noise not to register in John’s hearing.

When John tilts his head to the side, Sherlock knows that such hopes are pointless.

“Now you’ve done it,” Mary said, smiling again, though for a different reason this time. “I forgot he didn’t know about this.”

“What was that?” John asks at the same time. 

Mary claps her hands together in what is clearly some strange dance of amusement. 

Sherlock considers pretending he didn’t hear John’s question for a second. It seems like a pretty good idea. “What was what?”

“That noise,” John presses.

Mary giggles. Sherlock consoles himself that it would be much easier to hold up this charade were he in full health, and without the heckling coming from his mind palace.

Nonetheless, he looks up to John, seemingly guileless. “What noise?”

Mary sputters again, and Sherlock almost wishes John would give a sign of Mary being present in their conversation so he could tell her to blooming well shut up. 

His silent wish is granted. Mary stops grinning, and even John’s silent for a while. A long while. Long enough for Sherlock to look up at him in some concern. “John?”

“I’m gonna make a deduction,” John says.

“Oh okay. That’s good.” Very good. Sherlock had thought he’d need to find some other way of changing the subject. But apparently John was good enough to do this one for him. Or, perhaps he just felt pity for the addict. The thought soured him before John spoke.

“Happy birthday.”

Sherlock hesitates. It would never do well to allow John to win these things too simply, after all. Then he inclines his head towards him, finding himself unaccountably pleased by John’s correct guess of it being his birthday. His lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile, but it has been far too long since it had been a normal part of his features. The expression feels strange again.

“Never knew when your birthday was,” John observes mildly.

Sherlock smirks into his lap. The smirk isn’t as strange as the potential smile. “Well, now you do.”

He tries not to behave too cocky. It’s incredibly clear that these observations on John’s part are an attempt to lull him into a false sense of security. John must think his brain far more addled post heroin addiction than it actually is. He’s about to be disappointed.

A moment passes. Two. Then, “We’re really not gonna talk about this?”

Again, Sherlock assumes the expression of benign lack of understanding. “Talk about what?” 

John narrows his eyes. Sherlock has discovered a particular expression he makes that seems to make John crazier than most. In return, John has discovered that incessant questioning causes the same reaction from him.

Or maybe that’s just part of John’s nature. 

“I don’t text her back.” Sherlock’s small lie makes him want to avert his gaze, which he’d be more likely to do if it weren’t one of the most obvious signs of misdirection. It was mostly true. He’d only texted her back that once. And he didn’t think that even John could blame him for that. Extenuating circumstances. 

The reaction he gets from John, who accepts the lie hook, line and sinker, is not what he expects. “Why not?”

Sherlock blinks. For a moment, he can’t think of anything to say, which gives John the opportunity to get into him again. 

“She likes you, and she’s alive… and don’t you have the first idea of how lucky you are?”

Sherlock continues to stare at John, too many thoughts interrupting each other in his head for him to manage to get any of them out. The last time he saw The Woman, it didn’t seem overly that she liked him, so much as that she was amused that she had finally worn him down. 

He didn’t mind that, of course, knowing that it wasn’t her who wore him down. He used her as much as she used him. 

Irene Adler isn’t the one Sherlock wants. He wants John. He doesn’t say any of this, however. He hasn’t been lucky since it was the four of them—he, John, Mary and Rosie—and at the moment he’s not even 50% sure that he’s ever going to get at least part of that back. 

Neither of them speak for a while. Sherlock still isn’t sure what to say, and John’s clearly waiting for him to say something regardless. When it becomes achingly obvious that Sherlock just isn’t going to oblige him, John finally adds, with some defeat, “Just text her back.”

“Why?” John’s simple, emotion light statement allows Sherlock to find the words to answer him back. Finally. He glances at John sardonically. ”Is your plan to share her like we did Mary?”

It’s too soon. Sherlock knows that the moment the expression of amusement flees John’s features. Sherlock looks down at the carpet, scared what he’s said is going to push John to leave. Scared he has pushed him away yet again.

But John doesn’t leave. He’s frozen in place, like he’s too startled by Sherlock’s words to simply leave. He stutters a couple of times. Sherlock resolutely stares at him, waiting for him to come to some idea of what he would like to say.

Secretly, maybe not so secretly, he’s enjoying having gathered the upper hand in the conversation again. 

“Uh… umm…” 

“Do calm down,” Sherlock tells him, after a sufficient amount of time has passed. He takes pity on him, for which John should be grateful. “I am joking. Surely you’ve heard of it.”

He isn’t joking. 

Not at all. 

John looks like he can’t decide whether he’s relieved or disappointed by Sherlock’s statement, which Sherlock takes a perverse amount of pleasure from.


	8. Chapter 8

“Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?”

“What elephant?” John looks wide eyed and around the room as though plainly he can see nothing. 

Sherlock only barely manages to stop short of rolling his eyes. “The last part of Mary’s video.”

“Oh. That,” John says. 

“That. Yes.” Sherlock thinks he has his answer inherent in just the way John speaks the words. It doesn’t look good for him. He wishes he had never brought it up. 

“Well, you know you’ll always be my closest friend,” John said. He, on the other hand, does roll his eyes at himself. “No matter what you do, it appears. Or, what I do.”

So, perhaps he’s rolling his eyes at both of them. 

“Yes, John. I know this,” Sherlock says, already beginning to close himself off from what he sees as future hurt. 

“Now, don’t go doing that,” John warns him.

“Doing what? Sherlock hears the drollness in his voice, but surely it’s to be expected at the idea that John could anticipate what it is that Sherlock’s doing.

“Closing yourself away. Locking yourself in your mind palace. Not dealing with the rest of the world like a normal person.”

Perhaps, in this instance, John has learned some observational tricks from his late wife.

Sherlock stifles a wince. “Yes, John.”

“Don’t you ‘Yes, John’ me.”

Sherlock fastens John with a look. “What, then, would you prefer me to do, exactly?” He is at his very driest. 

However, John has come a long way when it comes to dealing with Sherlock. In another moment, Sherlock might have curled his lips in pride and happiness over jus how much this one man has gone out of his way to understand one unloveable Sherlock Holmes.

“Wait for me.”

Sherlock blinks. “Wait for you?” he says. 

John inclines his head, as though it’s perfectly obvious. “My wife has just died. I’m having a really hard time dealing with that at the moment. I think… lots of work would do the trick, don’t you? I mean, provided I can find a decent nanny for Rosie.”

“For Rosie…” Of the whole statement, that’s about the only part of it that’s made any sense within the context for Sherlock.

“Of course, the place Mary and I had is too large for just little Rosie and me. I could keep it of course, so there’s a safe space for her that isn’t here. You’ll want to keep doing your experiments—”

Sherlock inclines his head. “John, what are you saying?”

John looks at Sherlock as though he is being very patient, but also a though that patience is now wearing thin. “I’m saying, Sherlock, that I have a lot of things to sort out in my life right now. But you’re as important to me as you ever were, and you’re part of the plans I’m making in this new life without Mary. Of course you are.”

Sherlock just mouths the words ‘of course’.


End file.
